“He was one of the guys that I reached out to,” Irving told Bontemps. “Not necessarily to gauge his thoughts on the decision, or to give me the okay, but it was for some clarity and also what the next steps going forward [would be]. Because there was some chance I was going to maybe be in Phoenix, or maybe in situations where the environment hadn’t been winning for a while, and Kobe dealt with that in 2005-06, and that was tough. So I had to ask him, and gauge him about that.

“But after the fact, after everything happened, he was just super proud, and super happy.”

Let the conspiracies begin. Did Kobe put Irving into the #musecage to get him to separate from LeBron after the fact and thus giving LeBron less of a chance to match Kobe’s five championships? Hmm. Hmm, indeed.

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